


what a goddamn time to be dying with you.

by thewriter8



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 1980's AU, Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alcohol, Angst, Comfort/Angst, Disease, F/M, Hospitals, M/M, i don't know a lot of things that'll break your heart, you can guess which disease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 11:16:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5246276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewriter8/pseuds/thewriter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Befores:<br/>-Bucky vacuuming their first apartment in his underwear.<br/>-Steve kissing Bucky's mouth, all accidental drunk, December falling into January, Time's Square, hello, 1980, and Buck did in fact taste like cinnamon.<br/>Afters:<br/>-Steve keeping Bucky's old shirts, even though they don't fit.<br/>-Steve opening his bedroom window, December crawling into January, drunk and home, hello, 1985, and it is in fact too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what a goddamn time to be dying with you.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm always unsure how to tag things on AO3, so here's a note from me.  
> -this is about the AIDS epidemic in the 80's.  
> -it is about scrawny steve growing strong and strong bucky growing scrawny.  
> -it is about three so close friends coping with disease and time left.  
> -the plot hops around, from befores to afters to durings, and i hope you don't get too confused.  
> -it is sad and more than sad, and i am sorry.  
> i hope this is enough, and you find something truthful to enjoy about this piece.

Everything becomes befores and afters. The durings are labelled as hell and filed away for moments Steve is vulnerable, like during dreams and watching shitty tv and people in the grocery store asking 'oh, how's Bucky', the people who don't know what's part of the afters, who just know the duo, inseparable at the hips and hearts, the people who are innocent, Steve knows, because nobody knows what the hell was like or even the afters or even the befores because it is all Steve's burden, Steve is it, he's all there is for Bucky, during the hell that is all antiseptic and the afters all clenched fists and the befores that feel like:  
"There's no way I'm wearing those, Buck."  
"Hey, come on. You're always cold, they have 'warm' in the name."  
"I'm not a dancer and besides that, they're ugly."  
"Touchy, touchy. I'm just looking out for you, Rogers." And Buck puts the leg warmers back on the rack, throws an arm around Steve's shoulders, and Steve tells him that night about how he's got some asthma meds from school, experimental stuff, but maybe his lungs will get strong enough for jogs with Bucky in the mornings or weightlifting with Bucky in the nights, and Bucky's face lights up, and he hugs Steve in their shitty apartment, not on the street, because people look at them weird practically always, Bucky snorts into his diner coffee one breakfast, loud enough for the booth nearby to hear, and Steve doesn't blame the homophobes, not really, because he stares at Bucky's mouth and thinks it would taste like blackberries in summer and ale in fall and honey in spring and cinnamon in winter.

Peggy knows some afters, some hell, because she'd force Steve to sleep at her apartment instead of the hospital armchairs or the empty bedroom in Brooklyn. She knows Buck like a deck:  
"You're an idiot, Barnes."  
"You can't tell Steve, Peg, please please don't tell Steve."  
"Who was it? Do I know the guy?"  
"Someone from work, no, you don't know him."  
"Well, apparently you do," The clack of cards, "Royal flush."  
"You win again." Bucky slides the pot of loose change and chapsticks across the table, a pause. "I understand if you tell him."  
"Damn right you understand."  
"Peggy, he loves you." And it almost sounds like a question. She snorts, looks at him, then Steve walks in, eyes on Bucky first, and he has his answer.  
He burns hot with guilt for three days after. Steve thinks Buck has a fever. The real fevers come later.

Another before:  
"There's no way you're catching up to me." Bucky watches Steve place another weight on the barbell. Steve shrugs inside his tightening shirt.  
"What if I do?"  
"Scrawny Steve Rogers, taking the world by storm? I'll tell the 90's to watch out." He throws a sweat rag at Steve, they settle into their routine, Steve thinking how Bucky says Steve's name a lot a lot-

An after:  
Bucky never lives to tell the 90's anything.

Steve does kiss Peggy before bed every night, like her lips are a lifeboat and they are, they really are, and the words that come from them are a lifeboat to so many, to all the activists and sufferers and to Bucky, 3 years too late, but Steve and Peggy know he hears them, hears their work and words and fight, like all the others in various stages of befores, hells, afters, looking for something or someone without disease to cling to.

The before that began it:  
Peggy doesn't tell, so Bucky lives a free man, except not really. Because the way Steve smiles at him traps him more than his coworker's tongue down his throat. And he watches Steve grow and grow and Bucky's clothes fit Steve and fit them both so they wear each other's pants which Peg thinks is weird but Bucky tells her to drop it because Steve is grinning and grinning and buttoning Bucky's shirts across his torso.  
And Bucky's pants fall down at work one day. People laugh and he laughs and Steve laughs when Bucky tells the story later and then Bucky goes to bed. He forgets about it. He eats but he has to buy a belt. Steve has to buy bigger clothes. He hangs Bucky's shirts up with apology in his eyes, like he's ashamed to give them up. And he is, he is, he is, eating a five-egg and toast breakfast while Bucky sleeps through his alarm for work.  
"Buck? Hey, Bucky."  
"Mmmmfffmmm..."  
"Hey, I made coffee. You're uh, gonna be late for work. I called them."  
"What? What fucking time is it?"  
"Uh. 9:52."  
"Steve, what the fuck, why didn't you get me up earlier?"  
"I thought you needed sleep, you've been so tired, I-"  
"Fuck." He's out of bed, pulling on whatever clothes he can find, pulling his belt to the farthest hole. And Steve stares at his ribs like they're foreign because they are, they are on Buck because Steve's stared at him for years but he's never seen them ever, not once, it's always been muscle layered on muscle and now where is it?  
"Buck?"  
"Coffee, yeah, I know Steve, thanks."  
"I think you should see a doctor."  
"Bucky, I..."  
Because there's a splotch, an angry black splotch or two or three on Bucky's ribcage and then Steve knows, he's seen the pamphlets, he's been to doctors enough, he's seen the marks, not just the deep circles under the eyes or the ill-fitting clothes but the marks, the marks, the one on Bucky's ribs, the one staring him in the face, slapping him all at once because Buck doesn't have the other marks, the pricks from needles and he's always refused drugs because of his father, Steve knows that, but has Bucky ever refused a body against his, has Bucky ever refused a girl on his arm, has Bucky ever refused anyone but Steve in his bed?

Peggy enrolls in nursing school once Bucky tells her, shows her. It's about damn time I graduate, she thinks, but she really means, I'm going to fix him.

Befores:  
-Bucky lighting ten sparklers on 4th of July, during the summer Steve’s mom died.  
-Steve fighting splashes from Bucky in the Atlantic Ocean.  
-Bucky vacuuming their first apartment in his underwear.  
-Steve kissing Bucky’s mouth, all accidental drunk, December falling into January, Time’s Square, hello, 1980, and Buck did in fact taste like cinnamon.

“I made you a drink.”  
“Please Peg, I just want to sleep.”  
“Just one drink with me.” She slides the pint glass across her kitchen counter, taking a sip of her own. So he resigns, drinks, his body collapsing on the couch against his will.  
“No change. Nothing new.”  
“We don’t have to talk about it, Steve.”  
“I know, I just...want to keep everyone up to date.”  
“That’s not your job. But thank you. I’m visiting tomorrow, so feel free to go to work,” Steve balks. Peggy sighs, “You’ve got to pay the bills.”  
“The utilities have gone way down, actually. I never noticed how long Buck’s showers were.” And he laughs because there is nothing else to do. Peggy takes another drink. Steve sits like the dead and dying. Two miles away, Bucky calls a nurse to adjust the pillows behind his head and no one comes. He sweats through his sleep and Peggy holds Steve while he weeps and the next morning she goes to the hospital and he goes to work and Bucky goes nowhere.

Some fucker blows out the electricity to their apartment building right before new year 1982, so Bucky runs down the block for candles and flashlights.  
“They only had apple scent.” Buck says with bags on his arms.  
“Peggy’ll think we took up baking.”  
“Hopefully they’ll get the power back on soon. Unless you want to become a chef.”  
“Nah, I’m alright,” Steve laughs, smelling a candle before lighting it, “You wanna just sleep in the living room tonight? It’s below freezing out there.”  
“Of course it is.” Buck sighs, leaning back against the couch. He lights another candle, but no more than two. Steve leans beside him, stretching out his ever stronger legs.  
“I’m really glad your asthma meds are working out, Rogers.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah. I mean, it means a lot to you. You’ve been really happy.”  
“Thanks Buck. I’ve liked doing stuff you do. I mean, you know...Just not having an asthma attack while walking to class is nice.” He grins. Bucky chuckles, leans his head on Steve’s shoulder, watches the wax pool beneath the wicks.  
He almost tells Steve he fucked a guy after work last week, but the two fall asleep in a pile of blankets and sweaters and each other instead.

Afters:  
-Steve finding pills under the bed, last hopes.  
-Steve keeping Bucky’s old shirts, even though they don’t fit.  
-Steve throwing out ‘get well soon’ cards from Bucky’s friends.  
-Steve opening his bedroom window, December crawling into January, drunk and home, hello, 1985, and it is in fact too much.

There’s a lull for the two of them, after the diagnosis but before the invalidity. There are pills and special diets and hours cut at work so that means more hours spent together. It makes Bucky say one day,  
“I wish I had fucked you instead.”  
And Steve wants to say you can now, you can you can. But Bucky never lets anything hurt Steve, never gives anything a chance to hurt Steve.  
But his hands wander more now and his words ramble more now and Steve sees a maybe life like this and he’s happy and they’re happy eating their respective meals and reading their respective books and sleeping in their not-anymore-respective bed. Steve holds skin-and-bones Bucky and thinks it could be like this. It could it could and it could.  
And then Steve carries a burning hot Bucky into the emergency room at 3:46 AM and all the coulds become can’ts.

A hell where Bucky stretches his hand across the hospital bed, reaching for Steve’s armchair, for Steve’s hand and Steve’s mouth and Steve’s body one disease too late, and no one’s there but a balled up hospital blanket.

Steve remembers the night Buck came home because he smelled different and he had been out so late and Steve didn’t want to sleep until he was home.  
“Why are you still up?” Angry, frustrated, maybe surprised?  
“I wanted to make sure you got home okay. Plus reading for school.” He lies.  
“You have class in the morning.” Scoff, hangs up his coat.  
“I know. I can make my own choices. I’m a big kid.” Steve stands, moves toward Bucky. A flinch. A step back. An unspoken apology and goodnight.  
Things weren’t different between them after that night. At least of course, until they had to be different.

He buys a lot of root beer during the lull because Bucky thinks it tastes the best and he can’t have alcohol with his pills.  
“But root beer was always shit before.” He finishes his third of the night.  
“Maybe one of the pills is sponsored by the root beer companies. They could put some kind of addictive shit in it.”  
“Now I’m paranoid, Rogers.” They laugh. Buck opens another root beer, says, “You’re cute when you make jokes.”  
“And you’re making too many jokes.”  
“I’m serious. I like when you laugh. Is that so bad?” Buck’s ears burn hot.  
“This must be the root beer talking.” Steve smiles a little crooked, finishes his coke, sober by proximity.  
“Whatever. What’s for dinner?”  
Whatever his stomach will take is the unspoken answer. As of late, it’s been spinach and hot dogs. Steve stocks up like a boy scout until three days later it’s cabbage and cheese sandwiches.

He finds a frozen pack of hot dogs at the back of the freezer during the afters, strong enough to pack up and move out and leave these ghosts behind, but not strong enough to throw the hot dogs away so he breaks a window with them instead.  
Peggy finds Steve on the floor staring at the shattered glass an hour later.  
She helps him pay for the damages. She helps him up off the floor. She helps him eat dinner at their new favorite diner, an after diner, not like the before diner across the street where Bucky once spent an entire meal balancing forks on a glass.  
Six months of after and counting. Peggy forces herself to forget the basics of poker and switches the beer she drinks.  
She lets Steve talk and cry and she finishes her second semester of nursing school instead. She starts her third and she’s observing nurses on the Med-Surg floor and there are so many patients and every single one is Bucky and she excuses herself and heaves sobs in the janitor’s closet and goes to Steve’s practically packed up apartment and says move in with me.  
The afters lose some bite after that. They breathe easier.

The first before is in their first semester of school, before Buck drops out. Steve snaps a photo of him on campus, as surreptitiously as possible. Bucky compliments his corduroys. They are both done for from that moment on.

Steve keeps too many things after, and he keeps on apologizing to Peggy for all the boxes in their only closet, nothing he’ll throw away, and he keeps throwing away money on developing film that hurts more than any of it.  
Peggy lets them each frame only one. Hers is the three of them around alcohol from some bar, all pink cheeked and glowing. A birthday maybe. Or St. Patrick’s Day. She smiles when she looks at it.  
Steve’s is just Buck, lit by the shrieking white light coming in through the window of their apartment. It’s the first snow since they moved in. Buck’s holding coffee and watching more flakes fall. Steve doesn’t ever look at it.

No one was there, which is probably the way you thought it would happen. Because that’s the way it happens, unless you are very lucky. But Steve isn’t lucky, and Peggy isn’t lucky, and the drugs let Buck sleep through it, so perhaps he’s the luckiest of them all.

“I was, uh, asked to do this. By James-B-Bucky, I mean. It was the last bit in his uh, will, so...figured I’d do it. Part of me just wants to tell some jokes. Why else would he ask me to do this except to make you all laugh? But really he uh, Hate-hated talking about himself. So I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be doing here. I’m not sure. I guess this has always been kind of my job-I actually got Buck his last job, he needed a reference and chose me, so I guess I’ll read you what I sent them.  
“Uh, let’s see…’James Barnes is a hard worker, but better than you’re thinking. Like blisters all over his feet and hands, and he’s still gotta walk home. He is never unhappy, unless he doesn’t get a good breakfast. He is an excellent teacher, and fighter. H...He is so strong.’ And, um...I hope to be as strong as he was. But I’m not too sure. He was the one who was so sure of us both.”

The last will and testament of James Buchanan Barnes-  
I don’t have enough to merit getting this legalized, I don’t think. So here goes nothing-  
-All of my clothes are Steve’s. Donate what doesn’t fit. Which should be everything at this point. Keep my work boots.  
-Poker chips, cards, coasters to Peggy. Win big, baby.  
-Donate or keep whatever else is left.  
-Except my dad’s watch. You know what to do with it, Steve.  
-Do my eulogy too? It’d mean a lot.  
I wish I had more to give you guys. Mainly I wish I didn’t have to give them.  
Peggy- you’re the strongest of us all. But don’t lose it trying to keep it all together. Love you.  
Steve- It wasn’t enough time. For any of it. I am so sorry, which I know isn’t enough. So please be angry at me. And please let me love you in all the time I don’t have left. Also, I hope we kiss this New Year’s. 1985, what a goddamn time to be dying with you.

You won’t see all the afters. You won’t see Peggy graduate nursing school. You won’t see all the money she raises for research. You won’t see her revisit all the places that used to be too much (and still are). You won’t see her get married. You won’t see awards and congratulations and people who love her for all the great she’s done.  
Steve can fit Bucky’s boots, but the arches are so different. His feet can’t warp them to fit his own body, so his shins ache after days of wear.  
You won’t see him visit the grave. You won’t see the love he leaves there. You won’t see the grief he carries with him, right there behind his eyes.  
You won’t see his success with Peggy. You won’t see him on New Year’s, any of them. You won’t see him take the 90’s by less of a storm than Bucky imagined, but enough of a storm to stop and stare, enough to make Buck proud.  
And the afters should be unimaginable.


End file.
